“What is Hecuba to [me]?”: The Impossibility of Catharsis and Rupture of Representation in Marina Carr’s Hecuba

Marina Carr’s Hecuba (2015), an adaptation of Euripides’s tragedy Hecuba (424 BC), resonates with Hamlet’s famous line “What is Hecuba to him, or he to her?” (Shakespeare, 1599/2003, 2.2.511) for the contemporary spectator by arousing pain and guilt instead of a cathartic effect. In the adaptation, Carr portrays a different presentation of the Queen of Troy from her representations in several classical texts. Contrary to the classical picture of a vengeful mad queen, she retells the untold story of the tragic queen and reveals Hecuba’s sorrow, pain, love for her children, and the vulnerability of a woman who is surviving a war. In Hecuba, Carr manages to build an ethical encounter between Hecuba and both Agamemnon and the spectator. In doing so, she breaks the representation by applying experimental theatrical devices that disturb the spectator in their comfort zone and subvert the cathartic effect. The play leaves the spectator with the burden of heavy pain and responsibility for the Other. In this respect, this article discusses the impossibility of the purgation of feeling in contemporary theatre through a Levinasian ethical approach in relation to the Other in Marina Carr’s Hecuba.